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The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

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Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#11

Post by amalcon »

derefr wrote: post #5

The author has inadvertantly stumbled upon a part of hacker culture with wide-ranging implications, that is almost never discussed—and that is that people expect that you publish code because you want it to be changed , and not simply read . This stems from a deeply-rooted tradition in programming of not reading a codebase until you have a problem with it that you must fix . People don't "read for pleasure" in the pr…

I often find that I can't properly "read" code without a mindset of wanting to change something about it. Of course, I sometimes invent a trivial "something" when I really want to understand a piece of code.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#12

Post by derefr »

Splines wrote: post #9
derefr wrote: post #5

The author has inadvertantly stumbled upon a part of hacker culture with wide-ranging implications, that is almost never discussed—and that is that people expect that you publish code because you want it to be changed , and not simply read . This stems from a deeply-rooted tradition in programming of not reading a codebase until you have a problem with it that you must fix . People don't "read for pleasure" in the pr…

> ... people expect that you publish code because you want it to be changed, and not simply read. Browser-interpreted code makes this quite a fuzzy issue. What are the rules with running tools like GreaseMonkey? Is there a legal or moral line that shouldn't be crossed with tools like GM? As an aside, I wonder if there is any gender bias in the "publish code"-->"you want it changed" conclusion. I've observe that femal…

I would say "publishing" must always be a distinct step, and that there has to have been a conscious effort of some sort on the part of the programmer to put the code up separately from its existence within a program. However, even if some people disagree with that, I don't think it could be argued that obfuscated code was to be considered "published"—which could actually be a good argument for code obfuscators.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#13

Post by VBprogrammer » 

  When HATETRIS reached Hacker News, someone posted some
  JavaScript which would modify the game to have gravity.
I believe this is in response to the diff I posted. I'm sorry if I infringed upon any stated or implied licence in posting that. I will of course remove it if you feel that is appropriate.

Personally I feel what I posted, given the readership of this website, was directly equivalent to simply saying "Wow, wouldn't that be really hard if it had gravity!" That was the way I'd intended it to be read anyway.

For what its worth, I really enjoyed your programming style, it was clean, concise and built in such a way that extending it to include gravity was trivial. It took me longer to remember the syntax to diff than to figure out the changes.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#15

Post by _delirium »

Ah, but as a recipient, the arrangement with your code is the same as with your text: if you put something where I can get it, I'll modify it if I wish.

You may of course prevent me from distributing entire derived works, but not from distributing mere patches like the one that was posted for HATETRIS--- any more than you could prevent me from posting a Perl script that uses a regex to change characters' names in your novel.

Particularly amusing that a rant like this would come in response to someone modifying a game that was itself an unauthorized modification of another game.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#16

Post by thisduck »

The point being made "creations being his babies" seems somewhat odd to me.

"But it's weird to me that other people are so okay with mucking about with other people's work."

That's also called "progress". It's how people learn and grow.

Is it okay to take Shakespeare's characters and modify them here and there, play with the setting a bit, and generally muck about? It's legal, but is it okay? I assume his feelings are hurt that someone has taken his idea/characters and modified them. Because it's not as if he took the _idea_ of tetris and modified it. Imagine how hurt the author of tetris would be! Oh, but is it okay if the auhtor is dead (like Shakespeare)?

Sorry, but I don't buy the argument/complaint. You want people to follow certain rules, put up a license. Hundreds of ideas, words and characters are written, and a lot of them are alike. We're not all that unique.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#17

Post by alexkay » 

  I like open source software. I'm a big fan of the
  objectives that open source software is created to
  achieve. I really like not having to pay money for
  Notepad++ and TrueCrypt and so on and so forth. I
  wish the movement every success.
FSF is against the "open source" moniker for a reason. Some people associate it only with freedoms 0 and 1, and disregard the other two.

It looks like the author falls into the same trap.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#18

Post by abeppu »

philh wrote: post #10

I would guess the majority of source code available online is explicitly open source. So it's reasonable to assume that this particular bit of source code available online is also (intended to be) open source, if there's no indication otherwise. Fiction is not the same, for various reasons: a work of fiction posted online is probably not "open source" (creative commons or similar), so that's not the default assumptio…

I think it's a bit more than a culture clash. The issue is not only that the majority of source code readable online is open source; it's that making code readable is the only thing you need to do to allow people to copy and modify it. It's a bit like a failed Searlian speech act where an actor running lines or a student practicing French is overheard and presumed to be saying something to someone in particular. The OP's readers, having looked at his post and code, quite understandably mis-inferred that he meant the posted material to be beneficial or useful to his readers, when really he only intends it to be useful to himself in some hypothetical future where he wants a job.

To my mind, this is similar to saying "look but don't touch" about a door handle, an elevator, or a platter of hors d'oeuvres in a crowded party. Of course people are bound to be confused; that's not the way to go about bragging to people about your fragile antique doorknob, guerilla marketing for the Otis elevator corporation or demonstrating what a really well made (prototype) bruschetta looks like.

This isn't merely a cultural issue, where we're used to the availability of code being a signal that it's open source. It's a deeper issue of social cognition than that. Other people are seeing the hatetris post, and making the perfectly normal inferences that humans as sophisticated social creatures are bound to do -- namely that if he's putting stuff up publicly and even points to it enthusiastically, and that stuff offers natural interactions to the reader, then it must be because he intends his readers to partake of those natural interactions with that publicly available stuff. Here the stuff is code and the affordances are reading, copying and changing, but I they needn't be for this error to occur. The OP's just failed to consider that his readership might mistake his exhibiting of untouchable code as an invitation to interact with it.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#19

Post by [deleted] »

_delirium wrote: post #15

Ah, but as a recipient, the arrangement with your code is the same as with your text: if you put something where I can get it, I'll modify it if I wish. You may of course prevent me from distributing entire derived works, but not from distributing mere patches like the one that was posted for HATETRIS--- any more than you could prevent me from posting a Perl script that uses a regex to change characters' names in you…

[deleted]

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#20

Post by what »

mattyb wrote: post #6
derefr wrote: post #5

The author has inadvertantly stumbled upon a part of hacker culture with wide-ranging implications, that is almost never discussed—and that is that people expect that you publish code because you want it to be changed , and not simply read . This stems from a deeply-rooted tradition in programming of not reading a codebase until you have a problem with it that you must fix . People don't "read for pleasure" in the pr…

People don't "read for pleasure" in the programming world; they don't even read To learn—have you ever had a school assignment that charged you with reading more than 1KSLOC? The only reason, as a programmer, I will ever "cd src/", is that I am on a mission to fix a problem. Seriously? As a programmer , the problem I'm often on a mission to fix in /src is that I haven't learned enough.

I'm with you on this one. I like to understand how things work and how other people approach certain problems. You can find new tricks to add to your bag. Which is also why I like to reinvent the wheel. Waste of time? Maybe, if you don't want to learn anything.
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